


at least i'm not as sad (as i used to be)

by chocobos



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Turtle McCoy, Cute, Gen, M/M, Meddling, Party, Schmoop, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 06:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocobos/pseuds/chocobos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the top of McCoy’s ‘Shit I Have Absolutely No Desire To-Do Ever,’ list next to ‘mow his seriously overgrown lawn’ and ‘succumb to deadly wounds to the abdomen’ is ‘attend Christine Chapel’s Valentine’s Day Party.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	at least i'm not as sad (as i used to be)

**Author's Note:**

> Belatedly written for the prompt I received at my Tumblr:
> 
> 'Prompt! McKirk; Present day AU; they meet at a neighbors I'll-advised Valentine's Day party and hit it off with awkward flirting in the backyard at sunset :>'
> 
> Sorry this is so late! I hope you enjoy this anyway. This is way too fluffy. This is also my first Bones/Jim fic and Star Trek fic in general, so I hope it isn't too terrible! 
> 
> Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

At the top of McCoy’s ‘Shit I Have Absolutely No Desire To-Do Ever,’ list next to ‘mow his seriously overgrown lawn’ and ‘succumb to deadly wounds to the abdomen’ is ‘ _attend Christine Chapel’s Valentine’s Day Party._ ’  
  
It’s bold, underlined seven times, with _italics_. He doesn’t want to go to the point that he needs emphasis. He’s not quite sure what that says about it, and about him in general--it’s bad, most likely.  
  
It’s not even that McCoy doesn’t like her--it’s quite the opposite, actually; it’s no secret that the little fiery blonde barging in through his front door when he first moved in with cookies and an attitude the size of Georgia, was quite possibly the icing on the damn cake. He liked her from the moment he first met her. He was doomed from the beginning, really--it’s just that the idea of spending a Saturday night in Chapel’s home with strangers for company, quite honestly terrifies him.  
  
McCoy isn’t a recluse so much as making small talk with strangers just makes him damn uncomfortable.  
  
Christine knows this, no doubt, because Christine had him pegged as that cranky and miserable small-town, Georgia man from the get-go, basically and in the three weeks that he’s known her, she’s steadily tried to pry him out of his stubborn shell.  
  
So far, it hasn’t worked.  
  
But. he has learned that the woman has good taste in beer, and hard liquors, and basically everything else (McCoy is not actually convinced that Christine Chapel isn’t God or someone similar, but he keeps that thought tucked away; there are some things that sound way too insane, even for him).  
  
“You’re going,” her voice is firm, and hinging on annoyed. This may or may not be because Leonard has tried to get out of it four times already, with no success.  
  
The woman is a damned tank.  
  
“That isn’t really the place for me, Chris.”  
  
McCoy can feel and see her scowl through the phone. “Don’t be such an introvert, Leonard,” she retorts.  
  
One of Christine’s everlasting attempts at getting McCoy situated in their neighborhood is to introduce him to her friends. So far, McCoy has avoided such, either by taking extra shifts at the hospital or by evading her advances and shutting himself in his room with a crappy b-grade romance novel and too much booze.  
  
Not that Christine needs to know that, though.  
  
(She probably already does, but this is one of those things McCoy would rather remain blissfully oblivious to.)  
  
“It’s not that I don’t think your friends don’t sound like lovely folk or anything,” McCoy amends, because if there’s one thing he learned in the shitfest that was his entire relationship with Jocelyn, it’s to always, always apologize. And to make the shitty things you say sound less shitty. Not that Christine is anything like Jocelyn, because she’s not, but he hopes the sentiment still rings true, here.  
  
“Leonard,” Christine sighs. “I know you absolutely abhor human interaction if you’re not saving the other person, but I really think you’ll like them. You’ve been here for three weeks, and the only people you know remotely, may I add, are me and the pediatric specialist you sometimes need to transfer patients to.”  
  
“I--”  
  
“Yelling at medical interns doesn’t count,” Christine cuts in, before McCoy could even think about arguing.  
  
McCoy scoffs, but ultimately doesn’t know what to say.  
  
It’s not even that people don’t care for him, it’s quite the opposite, actually. Despite his overall brooding presence and his cranky backhanded comments, a good chunk of the population actually seems to like him despite this, probably because of it--this is most likely because they think he’s either kidding or exaggerating, but.  
  
He’s always been weird around people. Especially strangers.  
  
“I don’t care if I have to drag you there by your hair,” McCoy goes to cut her off, but he imagines she's leveling a challenging gaze at him and his defense immediately crumbles. “You’re going and you are going to play nice. They’re all good people, Len, if a little misguided.”  
  
McCoy’s mouth twitches; leave it to Christine to be completely honest.  
  
“Okay.” McCoy says.  
  
*  
  
He regrets agreeing almost immediately, but he knew it was going to happen, anyway.  
  
McCoy does not put it past Christine to not actually drag him next door by the hair.  
  
*  
  
The day of the party, he dresses cleanly, and shaves the (somewhat horrifying) beard off his face. If there’s one thing he’s sure of about this party, it’s that he doesn’t want to show up and have Christine’s friends immediately dub him a degenerate hobo. McCoy is many things--a horrible husband, as provided by his ex-wife, somewhat of a drunk, and a damn good doctor--but he’d like to think that ‘degenerate’ doesn’t fall under Leonard McCoy’s ‘I am’ category.  
  
He also cracks open a few beers, because if he has any chance of getting through this thing without pulling out his hair, first, it’s going to take some liquid courage.  
  
A lot of liquid courage.  
  
*  
  
He’s early, and he’s sort of mortified.  
  
If he wasn’t damn sure Chapel had seen him through her drapes--her red and pink  
fucking drapes, Jesus H Christ--he would’ve high-tailed it home so he could camp out in his living room like a creep until more people got there, but she’s already opening the door and hugging him tightly around the waist, so McCoy loops both arms around her shoulders and sighs.  
  
McCoy has never had it easy with other people, but Christine emits this sisterly ethereal presence that calms his usual inner turmoil. He feels comfortable around her in the way that he’s never really felt around a woman and it’s nice.  
  
If not strangely fucking bizarre, but nice.  
  
“You came,” Christine smiles, gently, like she hadn’t spent the last week cajoling him into it.  
  
“I have it on good authority I probably would’ve lost my balls if I didn’t show up,” McCoy offers, but he can’t help the small smile that spreads across his face.  
  
It’s probably the beers.  
  
Chapel just laughs him off, leading him into her house.  
  
*  
  
“What did you do to your house?” McCoy asks, absolutely fucking horrified.  
  
McCoy and Christine’s houses were the same, one of those cookie cutter houses that were supposed to draw in overzealous first-time homeowners, and recent college graduates that were looking for what everyone else was looking for. The layouts were practically the same, only flipped, and they both usually opted for neutral wall colors.  
  
Christine’s living room is no longer neutral.  
  
There are red and pink velvet panels of fabric hanging from the ceiling, that drift inward and counter off the white tablecloths on the food buffets she’s set up. The couches and chairs that usually took up the space are nowhere to be seen, and distantly McCoy realizes that Christine probably put a lot more effort into this than he once gave her credit for. There are pink and red confetti hearts and roses scattered everywhere--cleaning up is going to be a bitch as far as McCoy can tell, and he knows he’ll probably come back over here to help her, anyway, so he doesn’t even try to talk himself out of it--and candles adorn almost every surface that can support them.  
  
It should look utterly ridiculous, and corny, but she pulls it off effortlessly.  
  
Doesn’t mean he has to like it, though. “What did you let vomit on your carpet, Christine?” He asks, pointing to a particularly suspicious looking pink and red blob.  
  
Christine rolls her eyes at him. McCoy isn’t really surprised; she does that a lot. If there’s one person crankier than himself, it’s probably her.  
  
“That’s confetti,” she snaps.  
  
“It looks contagious,” McCoy says mildly.  
  
Christine scowls. “Shut up and go get the cupcakes out of the oven, before I maim you for insulting my handiwork.”  
  
McCoy snorts, but ends up going anyway.  
  
*  
He’s also pretty sure she’d end up going through with it, too.  
  
The maiming, he means.  
  
*  
  
More people slowly start to pour in.  
  
This is the part that makes him nervous. He has absolutely fuck all idea how to handle a bunch of eyes on him at once, because it is so painfully obvious McCoy is the only one that has never been introduced to the group before. The back of his neck starts to sweat, and before he can think to wipe at it awkwardly (just to give his hands something to do) or manfully retreat into the bathroom to clean himself up, and maybe freak the hell out a little, Christine gestures to him with a poised hand.  
  
“Everyone, this is Leonard McCoy,” She sounds warm and fond, a teasing edge to her voice. No doubt she knows how uncomfortable this makes him, and no doubt she’ll spend the whole evening trying to exploit him.  
  
He gestures with an awkward hand, and tries to smile, but he’s sure it comes off as a grimace from the look Christine throws his way.  
  
At least he tried, he thinks grimly, and takes a sip of his–regretfully virgin–drink.  
  
*  
  
“Leonard!” Christine calls. McCoy curses under his breath, from where he was hiding out at the rec table on the porch, drowning himself in punch that was, actually, not spiked with booze and eating some damn delicious pigs in the blanket. Not a very smart hiding place, but he supposes he wasn’t really trying too hard. “Leonard.”  
  
He looks up.  
  
Christine’s not alone, there’s a tall, muscular blonde with her, who’s looking at McCoy curiously, probably because he’s hunched over the table like it’s his last saving grace (and it is, because Mccoy isn’t an idiot, he knows the only reason Christine is there with the guy is because she’s hoping they’ll hit it off--and fuck, the whole reason why Christine was so adamant about his attendance suddenly makes sense).  
  
“Hi,” McCoy grumbles, unsure.  
  
Christine looks between both McCoy and the man standing next to her, a slow, but steady smirk growing on her face. “Leonard,” Christine says warmly, tenderly, like she’s afraid McCoy is going to tuck tail and run--  
  
He probably would, if he could, actually.  
  
Maybe her suspicions aren’t as far-fetched as he’s pretending them to be.  
  
“-is Jim Kirk,” Chapel finishes. He should’ve listened, really, but at least he caught the most important part.  
  
He desperately hopes.  
  
“Nice to meet you,” Jim holds out a hand, and it looks warm, and calloused and inviting, so McCoy only hesitates for a moment before he takes it. It is warm, McCoy notes, and unsurprisingly the kid has a pretty strong grip, too.  
  
“You too,” McCoy grunts.  
  
Christine chances another look between them, and makes a hasty retreat that really shouldn’t be as slick as it is, but because it’s her, it’s different.  
  
“Is she always this...” McCoy pauses, searching for the word.  
  
Jim laughs, bright and open; so utterly contagious. “Abrasive?”  
  
“Not the word I was lookin’ for,” he says, his lips twitching slightly. “But yeah, let’s go with that.”  
  
Jim is silent for a while, but it’s not awkward. Usually, McCoy would’ve come up with some see through bullshit excuse, make a hurried retreat to go hide in a corner somewhere. He doesn’t though, and he thinks that says something about him. Probably not. Christine strategically made sure Jim kind of cornered him against the screen wall, so it’s either McCoy tucks tail and runs through the screen or he stays there and has a (surprisingly) decent conversation.  
  
“She just cares, is all,” says Jim eventually, taking a swig of his beer. McCoy is about to ask where he got that from--fuck does he need one--but doesn’t have to; as if reading his mind, Jim procures one from somewhere behind his back with a dimpled smile. “Beer?”  
  
McCoy quirks an eyebrow, and when all he gets is Jim’s ears flushing a pleasant crimson red in response, he takes the beer and grunts. “Thanks.”  
  
He’s pretty sure Jim hides a pleased grin by ducking his head, but that also, could be his (apparently overactive) imagination.  
  
*  
  
“You’re not from around here, are you?”  
  
McCoy looks up from where he was nursing his beer and grimaces. “That obvious, huh?”  
  
Jim laughs. “I wouldn’t have noticed, normally, but you got that Georgian farmers tan,” He says, and points to where the cuffs of McCoy’s jeans have ridden up to show the stark contrast between his feet and his ankles.  
  
McCoy scowls at him, and takes a long swig from his beer. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”  
  
“Plus,” Jim adds belatedly, like he likes seeing McCoy squirm. He honestly wouldn’t put it past the kid. “Christine informed me on the walk over here.”  
  
McCoy can’t help it, he snorts into his beer. “I have the feeling she’s probably told everyone here as much as I’ve told her.”  
  
“Which isn’t much,” Jim finishes.  
  
“Which isn’t much,” McCoy agrees.  
  
*  
  
“Chris tells me you’re a doctor,” says Jim suddenly.  
  
McCoy wonders why he’s trying to keep up a conversation when it’s so obvious McCoy is so bad at it.  
  
“I am.”  
  
“Do you like it?”  
  
“Would’ve wasted about ten years of my life if I didn’t, don’t you think?”  
  
“Yeah,” Jim says. “Yeah.”  
  
There’s an awkward pause.  
  
“What do you do?” McCoy asks, slowly, like speaking the words is equivalent to ripping off a fingernail.  
  
He’s really horrible at this.  
  
He should never be allowed around other humans if he’s not patching them up, really. He should probably go back to his house and collapse in his bed and sleep instead, but his feet stay firmly planted on the ground. He can’t move, and if he’s honest enough to admit it, he doesn’t want to.  
  
“I’m working through graduate school,” Jim shrugs, and McCoy is stuck suddenly with how damn young Jim is.  
  
He knew, in theory--hell, he’d gotten a habit of calling him kid in his head--but thinking it and realizing it are two very different things. He takes a swig of his beer to calm the rising sense of...something that he can’t quite identify in his chest, and looks over at Jim again.  
  
“What’re you studying?”  
  
“Biophysics.” It could be the lighting, as the sun is setting just beyond the trees that blanket Christine’s yard, but there’s a shadow of a smirk on Jim’s face, almost as if he’s smug McCoy is probably so surprised (and he is, surprised, he means).  
  
Something tells him Jim likes it, the element of surprise.  
  
McCoy whistles. “Damn.”  
  
“I’m pretty legit,” and with that, the stupor McCoy was in kind of shatters.  
  
What decent human being actually, unironically says legit?  
  
  
*  
  
Jim Kirk, evidently.  
  
*  
  
McCoy has only ever had two, honest, good-at-the-core friends in his life, one of them was his father, and the other, predictably, was his mother. He’s not experienced at all, when it comes to friendships, at least, which is why he sucks so colossally at them. He might even go out on a limb and consider Christine a friend; only a friend would drag another friend by the balls to her--admittedly not so sucky--Valentine’s Day party, right?  
  
He’s not good with people. He knows how to save them, knows how much force it would take to kill someone, knows how to put a body back together with gentle hands, patience, and a crapload of sanitized paper towels, but the inner-workings of human-on-human interaction escape him, most of the time. He has no idea how to balance on the tightrope that is carrying a conversation without causing offense or being boring.  
  
Unsurprisingly, McCoy has a lot of experience in that field.  
  
It truly is a miracle that Christine has managed to put up with him for this long, but McCoy suspects that’s more because Christine latches onto people like him maternally.  
  
McCoy would be a dishonest man if he said he wasn’t grateful for it.  
  
*  
  
There is a warmth steadily, but slowly, blooming throughout his chest that suggests Jim might just become one of those friends, too.  
  
(He’s probably getting ahead of himself here, though.)  
  
*  
  
McCoy has never understood Valentine’s Day. He indulged Jocelyn with it, because it made her happy, and back then that was all McCoy wanted, was to see that bright smile take across his wife’s face the way it did when he surprised her with flowers and reservations at her favorite restaurant.  
  
So, he did.  
  
He spent years buying her flowers and making reservations, but it ended in divorce, anyway.  
  
It makes him damned depressed, whenever he thinks about it, and on the good days he can shove it to the dusty, cobwebbed corners of his mind, hidden beneath layers of remorse and guilt. On the bad, well, he just drinks until it disappears.  
  
“You’re not one for Valentine’s Day, are you?”  
  
McCoy looks at him for a second, and then snorts. Either Jim is scarily good at reading him, or he’s being painfully obvious.  
  
It’s possibly a little bit of both.  
  
“Not really,” he admits.  
  
Jim has a weird expression on his face, one that McCoy thinks might be a smile. “Yeah,” he says, and then makes a sound caught between a snort and a sigh, staring down the bottle of his beer. “Yeah. Me either.”  
  
*  
  
They watch the sunset together.  
  
McCoy can’t help but think how embarrassing this is, that he’s standing in Chapel’s backyard, standing close enough to Jim that he can feel the heat radiating from him, even through the layers of their sweaters. He knows Christine is probably looking on from somewhere inside the house, playing nice with one of her guests as her eyes slide over the glass of wine she’s undoubtedly holding, watching them intently.  
  
He’s only known Christine for three weeks, but she’s fond of meddling.  
  
(He doesn’t think he minds it so much, now.)  
  
McCoy is about to say something, but Jim beats him to it, appraising McCoy with this glint in his eyes that makes him feel years younger. “Want to get out of here?”  
  
He raises an eyebrow. “Coming onto me pretty strong, aren’t ya kid?” He retorts, unable to stop the quip before it leaves his lips.  
  
Jim isn’t offended though, he just throws his head back and laughs. He polishes off his beer in another sip and throws it into a nearby trashcan. “Don’t think you can handle this, old man?”  
  
McCoy doesn’t do shit like this. He doesn’t strike up conversations at his friend’s Valentine’s Day Party with some random guy. He doesn’t keep conversation with said guy almost the entire duration of the party, without his conversation partner running off because McCoy deeply offended them or because he simply bored them--McCoy doesn’t say much, not unless he’s angry or drunk, but he can tell Jim will say enough for the both of them.  
  
Jim is looking at him, young and bright-eyed; the mischievous glint is still there, but it’s hidden under layers of sadness and darkness all at once. There’s a vulnerability that McCoy can’t place, and if ever asked about it, McCoy will deny it to be the reason why he sighs in defeat.  
  
He scowls, because he doesn’t do shit like this, has never done shit like this. He’s a man of routine and _Jim is not part of that routine_ , but he throws his bottle in the trash can along with Jim’s, and grumbles anyway. “Fuck it. Why not?”  
  
*  
  
And when Jim pulls up to some random bar nestled in the town’s center instead of the house or the apartment building McCoy was expecting, he takes one look at the empty parking lot and flickering light welcoming them inside, and _laughs_.  
  
He's never felt better.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Fun's song of the same name.
> 
> Feel free to follow me on Tumblr, where I'm taking prompts and commissions: sassfleet.tumblr.com


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